A nightly visit

The next few days were a blur. She had been disarmed and thrown in jail while she tried to figure out what had happened. Nobody else seemed to have any doubts that she was a cold-blooded killer and all the evidence spoke towards that too. Four men were dead, and they had barely fought back, if at all. She was a powerful Swordmaster, so people didn’t believe she had been scared or made a genuine mistake. Chun herself could only wonder what happened and try to atone for what she did.

They had stripped her naked and bound her with strong shackles around her wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. Whenever the guards entered to feed her, they were tense and they didn’t even bring any weapons inside the cell, as they were afraid the Swordmaster could use them somehow. Chun felt the weight of guilt laying heavy on her, her actions were unforgivable, and people were treating her accordingly.

One night, as she tried to get some sleep on the sparse straw littered throughout her cell, a single pair of footsteps approached the locked door. A key was hastily pushed inside the lock and the door carefully opened, a man wearing a cloak and hood slipping inside. He quickly stepped over to Chun Xi and knelt down beside her. She tried her best to turn her face towards him despite her restraints and caught a glimpse of a tanned man with a thick beard in his late thirties. “You’re still alive.”, he whispered. “For now, I guess.”, she replied, “I think my sentencing will be tomorrow and I’m quite sure it will be ****. Not that I don’t deserve it.”, her face dropped into the straw with a sigh of regret, “Those poor men.”.

“The fate of those men is regrettable, but I do not think it is your fault, Swordmaster.”, the man said to Chun’s surprise. She felt a needle poke into her butt and yelped, “What are you doing?”. The man finished extracting some of her blood before explaining, “The Naga have penetrated this city long ago. They masquerade as humans and take over positions of power. I have a theory that you were poisoned to alter your perception of reality. I will test your blood and if the results confirm my suspicion, you will have the full support of my organization. For now, do everything to stay alive.”. The man stood up and rushed to leave but Chun stopped him, “Wait, what is your name?”. He halted only for a second, “Glider.”, then he disappeared through the door and the lock snapped shut.